How do you measure the success of your growth projects? Is having a high growth rate enough to shout for success? Have you ever decided to focus only on 'the growth' because simply ‘If your business grows, you will meet your targets’?

1. Digital Growth & Targets
Are they related?
Maryam Ghanbarzadeh - Growth Editor
Near East Hub - BBC World Service

2. What is growth?
In general, it is the process of increasing in
size.
Example: you have had 20% increase in
the number of unique users consuming
your website content every week
What is a digital Target?
It is the level of performance that you
intend to achieve on your digital platform in
a specific period of time
Example: by the end of 2019 you want to
have 1M unique users consuming your
website content every week
How is this statement?
‘If your business grows, you will meet your targets’
The usual advice out of this statement is: don’t think/worry about targets,
focus on ‘the growth’ and you will succeed.
Maryam Ghanbarzadeh - Growth Editor - Near East Hub - BBC World Service

3. Let’s Discuss
With an example

4. Team A
Has an average weekly
growth rate of 50%
You have two teams
Team B
Has an average weekly
growth rate of 20%
Maryam Ghanbarzadeh - Growth Editor - Near East Hub - BBC World Service

5. Which one of these teams is the most successful one?
◈ Don’t you want to go to team B and have a conversation about how slow
they are and how important it is to improve their performance?
From growth point of view
Maryam Ghanbarzadeh - Growth Editor - Near East Hub - BBC World Service

6. Let’s Add another element
Their targets

7. Team A
Has an average weekly growth rate of
50% and stays 60% below its targets
With targets
Team B
Has an average weekly growth rate of
20% and has already met its targets and
stands 10% above it
Maryam Ghanbarzadeh - Growth Editor - Near East Hub - BBC World Service

8. Now what would you do?
◈ Is team B still the one that needs to improve its performance?
◈ Aren’t you alarmed about Team A?
Maryam Ghanbarzadeh - Growth Editor - Near East Hub - BBC World Service

9. ◈ Growth and Targets are not the same, but they are
strongly related to each other.
◈ Focusing your growth actions/projects on ‘growth’ only
can give you some good numbers, but it won’t
necessarily result in ‘meeting the targets’.
And what is the point of your actions if you are
not going to achieve what you are aiming for?
Maryam Ghanbarzadeh - Growth Editor - Near East Hub - BBC World Service

10. What else?
The most clever way of improving digital performance
is to set your growth actions/projects based on
◈ Your targets + ◈ Your current growth rate
Maryam Ghanbarzadeh - Growth Editor - Near East Hub - BBC World Service

11. Thanks!
Any questions?
Email me:
maryam.ghanbarzadeh@bbc.co.uk